Tag Archives: charity

Sometimes David Brooks says things that are true or correct. However, this does not occur in the above clip from Meet the Press, a popular television fiasco. Not even once!
Can we divide David Brooks’ clump of TV words into complete sentences and explain why each of them is wrong? We can.
Read more on Literally Every Sentence David Brooks Says About Paris Shootings Is Wrong (VIDEO)…

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker got re-elected somehow — mandate of heaven, we guess — and he’s putting together plans for a big inaugural hootenanny. Now, in years past, inaugural events in Wisconsin used to also double as fundraisers for charities, like Boys and Girls Clubs or other worthy causes. But that was merely a tradition, and an apparently outmoded one, so with his 2011 inauguration, Walker turned the admission fees for inaugural events into a Scott Walker/Republican Party of Wisconsin fundraiser, which raised quite a bit of campaign cash and not a few eyebrows. So it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that for 2015, he’s doing the same thing, raising money for a great Wisconsin charity: Scott Walker. Tell us more, Saul Newton of One Wisconsin Now:
Read more on Scott Walker Would Like All The Money For You To Pray With Him, Please…

This past Friday the President released his tax returns for 2013. Little ink was spilled over this momentous occasion, because it was boring. Mind-numbingly boring. Like pretty much everyone else’s tax returns. In fact, the most interesting thing about the Obamas’ taxes is that they aren’t interesting: the majority of Bamz income comes from his Presidential salary. His books made a nice chunk of change, but a lot less than they did in 2012, which probably explains why they only gave 12 percent of their income to charity instead of last year’s 25. (Joe Biden, God Love Him, managed to increase his frankly terrible charitable giving to about 5 percent.) So that’s all, right?
What, are you new here? Of course that’s not all. Enter The Blaze. Did you know the President hates God? That’s right. The President only gave $1500 to St. John’s Church, thereby illustrating THE PROBLEM WITH AMERICA. The Obamas did give away $59,000, or about 12 percent, to totally God-hating causes like the Lymphoma and Leukemia Society and the Red Cross. But they don’t count because that isn’t “tithing.” Read more on Barack Obama Hates God, Gives Money To Charities Instead Of Church…

Courage of convictions. This is one of the most important courages out there, cited more often than almost any other courage. So it came as quite a pleasant surprise when World Vision, one of the largest faith-based, pro-Jesus global charities on the planet, announced that they would hire legally married gay couples.
Kudos to World Vision! Proud that you are willing to stand up for what’s right, as you continue to spend about a billion dollars per year making the world a better place. Let’s get out the old checkbook and… wait, what? Say that louder, NPR:
World Vision U.S. changed course on Wednesday, saying it would return to its policy of not hiring Christians in gay marriages.
The Washington-state-based charity caused an uproar among its supporters when it announced on Monday that based on the changes many churches were making, it would allow the hiring of avowed Christians who had been legally married to someone of the same sex.
Two days! The change lasted for an entire two days?!? To put that in perspective, it took World Vision less time to reverse its position on LGBT folks than it did for Jesus to rise from the grave. Let’s angersplore. Read more on Bible-Thumping Global Charity ‘World Vision’ Has Brief Shining Moment Of Reasonableness On Gay Marriage, Is Sorry About That…

Carrion-feeding HLN anchor Nancy Grace is not one bit happy about this upcoming pugilistic contest between acquitted teen-shooter George “Sweet Florida Justice” Zimmerman and rapper person “DMX,” who sounds like an additive you’d find in cough syrup. Grace, whose career consists of walking viewers through the sordid details of crimes — for educational purposes, of course — told CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin Wednesday that Zimmerman’s participation in the ostensible fundraiser for charity was nothing more than a tasteless attempt to gain publicity and money off of other people’s misery.
We now pause for readers to take something for that irony-induced migraine that just hit. Read more on Elegance Maven Nancy Grace Finds These George Zimmerman / Rapper Person Fisticuffs Most Unseemly…

(Breaking: See Schadenfreude-Filled Update at end of post)
Welcome to all our Wonkettarian brothers and sisters. Our Inspirational Verse today comes from the Book of Chuck Jones and the Testament of Daffy, who sayeth,
“After all, it was me or him, and obviously, it couldn’t be me. It’s a simple matter of logic. I’m not like other people. I can’t stand pain. It hurts me.”
Friends, let us keep in mind this wisdom from a little black duck before we too harshly judge sister Renee Elmers of the 2nd Congressional District of North Carolina. Even though some 70 members of the House and Senate are either donating their pay to charity or refusing a paycheck during the government shutdown, Rep. Elmers has a far more practical approach to the question:
“I need my paycheck. That’s the bottom line,” Rep. Ellmers told ABC affiliate WTVD. “I understand that there may be some other members who are deferring their paychecks, and I think that’s admirable. I’m not in that position.”
Read more on GOP Representatives Need Their Gummint Money, So Stop Your Whining (Updated!)…

Former wunderkind editor and Number One Zombie Princess Di Fangirl Tina Brown has had a Very Bad Week. First came Buzzfeed’s report that Barry Diller will finally push her out on her toned and shapely bottom, and now the New York Post has decided to publish a scurrilous report, titled “Tina Brown’s Charity Gave Out Just $10K,” explaining that her charity, the Women in the World Foundation, only gave out a single $10 thousand grant on its $1.2 million in receipts. That is some Sarah Palin-level grifting right there. OR IS IT?
Read more on Tina Brown As Bad At Charity As She Is At Running Magazines And Websites…

Who is dying today, besides all of us? To name three, as writers do, it’s the bees, the ice, and Simpsons man Sam Simon! Have you heard about the bees? It’s no big deal, they’re just dying because all the poisons we use to make our food seem to be bad for bees, in that they get parasites and die because they’ve been poisoned. The ice, well you knew the ice was fucked, but now someone’s gone and figured out that the methane released by melting arctic ice is going to cost $60 trillion real dollars, because of how it’s going to cause even more fake global warming. And Sam Simon, so sad, he has the butt cancer, and he’s going to leave all his money to charity, except: Read more on It’s Cool, The Entire World Is Already Ruined, Don’t Even Worry About It…
Read more on It’s Cool, The Entire World Is Already Ruined, Don’t Even Worry About It…

We will begin this post by asking you a variation of the thing we always ask you, which is: “does it surprise you that a disproportionate amount of rich people are dicks?”
And of course it doesn’t, we’re used to it by now and have more or less adjusted to the new status quo of plutocratic post-capitalist Amercia, so it’s tough to really bother getting worked up about it at this point. But still, sometimes we get mathematical confirmation of exactly how selfish so many rich people really are, and it is worthy of specific commentary. For example, today we learned that rich people donate to charity at around half the rate of poor people: Read more on Rich People Do Not Give To Charity, Shocker…

You know that one Onion story that’s nearly mandatory in any discussion of the general awesomeness of Old Handsome Joe Biden, right? (Frankly, we doubt we even needed to link to it, but it’s a habit by now.) You probably also know that Biden knows about the meme, and thinks it’s “hilarious,” right? You might even know that Joe Biden is something of a motorhead in real life, and owns a 1967 Corvette that the Secret Service won’t let him drive — “It’s the one thing I hate about this job. I’m serious.”
So now, some goofballs from Fark have started a campaign to buy Joe Biden an actual white Trans Am like the one in the Onion piece, for the Lulz. Read more on Internet Wants To Buy Old Handsome Joe Biden A Trans Am For Teh Lulz, Charity…

Hey, everyone, just stop being so mean to Mitt Romney, right now, OK? Jeffrey Anderson of the Weekly Standard has done some math that conclusively proves that Mitt Romney is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being we’ve ever known in our life, especially when compared to that pipsqueak not-even-a-millionaire Joe Biden, who is not nearly rich enough to do anyone any good, and probably stomps on the iddle-widdle toes of adorable baby kittens for fun. Read more on Weekly Standard: Filthy Rich Romney Gave Far More To ‘Charity’ Than Did Merely Wealthy Joe Biden…

If I’m Ann Romney (AND I AM), I worry about Mitt’s latest tax return, because he just faked a higher tax rate than he should have actually paid … and it’s still ridiculously low.
Mitt Romney’s 14.1 percent effective federal tax rate in 2011 would’ve been lower if he’d deducted all of his charitable contributions from his nearly $13.7 million in income. But after estimating that he paid at least 13 percent of his income in taxes in each of the last 10 years, Romney opted not to deduct nearly $1.8 million worth of charitable contributions last year to artificially lift his tax liability.
So what would Romney’s effective tax rate have been if he’d deducted all of his charitable donations? About 12.2 percent.
You climb into bed with a multimillionaire who won’t show you his tax returns, you’d hope he could be honest at least the one time he spreads his 1040s open for you.
Read more on Mitt Romney Is One Glorious Tax Faker…

Is this the most masterful bit of spin in world history? Does it beat, say, explaining why how you dropped 20 points in three days means your opponent should get out of the race? YES. IT DOES. Here is His Lord High Hairgel Mittens of Romney explaining that he wants to keep his tithing between him and God, and that’s why you can’t see his tax returns:
In an interview with Parade Magazine that will be published Sunday, Romney explains that the Church keeps those records private. His and Ann Romney’s donations are “a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church.”
One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended to our contributions to be known.
Read more on Mitt Romney Won’t Release Tax Returns Because He Doesn’t Want To Brag About His Charity…

Do you live in the Washington DC metro area and enjoy hipster irony such as “playing dodgeball,” on your weekend, when you should really be at home meditating on the emptiness of your life? Well, by all means you should play dodgeball for charity on March 11. Get your loser political/lobbyist/think tank/junior staffer friends together and sign up! You can help solve diabetes — both in a literal sense, in your own body, by exercising, and also by helping raise money for a medical cure. And you can help solve the apparent social issue of “the first sustainable dodgeball tournament according to the Council for Responsible Sport who oversees the sustainability certification process for sporting events.”
Read more on Solve Diabetes & the Environment By Playing Dodgeball For Charity In DC…

We usually click “delete all” on the marketing press releases that flood the Wonkette Tips Line each day, but this Veterans Day Charity Auction thing to help veterans mauled and disfigured by Donald Rumsfeld’s murderous oil-company wars sounded kind of special: “Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is auctioning the opportunity for a winning bidder and two guests to join him for a private lunch at his office in Washington, D.C. Secretary Rumsfeld will personally give the winner and guests a tour of his office after lunch, which contains memorabilia, historic photos and more.” So we just come up with the winning bid and then, say, let a bunch of Iraq/Afghanistan homeless veterans into Rumsfeld’s office to show their love? This is for a Good Cause! Read more on Charity Offering Veterans Chance To Strangle Donald Rumsfeld…

Haha, here is the best argument ever made for shutting down the entire U.S. government bureaucracy: a Maryland county inspector fined a group of children $500 for selling lemonade to raise money for a children’s cancer charity, because these small freeloaders did not have a permit. No permit, no cure for cancer, children! Read more on Maryland Closes Nightmare Unpermitted Kids’ Lemonade Stand…

Even the famous picture magazine National Geographic has a profile of DC as a fun-city-where-you-can-do-fun-things, all thanks to those earnest twenty-somethings and The Real World and Top Chef, etc. So perhaps this would be a good time to mention things you can do in the city that help make the world a better place? Besides, if you spent last week speculating about Elena Kagan’s pajama time, you probably need to do some penance anyway. Read more on Help DC Live Up To Its Image…

Journopalooza is an event happening this Friday in here in DC where journalists will get together and sing to raise money for THEMSELVES, which isn’t nearly as good as, say, raising money for starving kids in Africa, but whatever, because supporting journalists is fun! As the fine art that is journalism dies and dies and dies, it’s important that we support journalists’ attempts to save their profession — attempts that now include moonlighting as musicians and singing rock operas about imprisoned super lobbyist/conman Jack Abramoff, for charity, of course. (Remember that scandal, and how it was like five years ago?) Read more on Journalists Can Sing, Too!…

Some 400 years ago the Pilgrims and Indians dined together to celebrate a bountiful harvest, and then the nice Pilgrims gave the Indians smallpox blankets and killed just about all of them. To commemorate this glorious occurrence in our nation’s history, we get the Thanksgiving holiday, and if you’re sticking around and braving a visit from your family, don’t worry, there will be plenty of things to do in the District. Read more on Thanksgiving Wonkabout Style: Turducken For All…

Oh hey look it’s the new Thanksgiving video from song-and-dance entertainer Bob Dylan. Can you find the secret list of presidents in this holiday polka? And why does Santa/Dylan leave out our two greatest presidents, Barack Obama and George W. Bush Junior? [YouTube]
Read more on Why Is Bob Dylan Racist Against Obama & Dubya?…

If you’ve ever dreamed of joining four other random slobs for a very sexy dinner with Sarah Palin and her snowmobile stoner husband Todd, next Tuesday is your lucky day! Maybe. That’s when you can start bidding on the eBay for a special group-food-eating occasion with some unemployed woman in Alaska who — for reasons not even Republicans pretend to understand — was a media celebrity for a few months last year. Read more on Dinner With Sarah & Todd Palin! Bidding Starts At Just $25,000 On eBay…